


Causality and Chaos

by Angelicalangie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), avengers endgame - Fandom
Genre: Friendship, Multi, Post Avengers Engame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 20:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18677065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelicalangie/pseuds/Angelicalangie
Summary: Please - for the love of all things Marvel - this is a Post Endgame Fic - therefore the word spoiler covers this. Dont ruin this movie for yourself if you haven't read it.Post Endgame - Fix it or continuance - who knows.The characters deal with their feels and something unexpected occurs which brings questions forth





	Causality and Chaos

_Chapter One - The Man out of Time_

_‘There was a time you would have killed for me. I saw it in your eyes that day in Siberia. He saw it too. Saw it as you held the shield up high, saw it in the tightness of your face, saw it colour your eyes – that kind of rage always does.’_

The thoughts are raging underneath the calm exterior. Words he wants to scream at the man. The decision was a fait accompli by the time he was even aware it was to be made.

_‘He saw it as you brought it down, only to plunge it into the suits reactor. I’ve played that day in my mind too often. Wondering if you meant that action to kill him or whether it was calculated. I always thought it was your shred of decency winning out.”_

He watches as the shield is given to Sam, Sam looks back at Bucky and he nods in his ascent to the proposition. The mantle of Captain America is not one he would have ever wanted for himself. Sam takes the shield, mentions that it feels like it belongs to someone else, before accepting it for himself.

_So, what I don’t understand is why you would just leave, live out an entire life, marry, have kids, grow old. Are you weary too?’_

It hadn’t been a sudden realisation that they weren’t alone, shortly after Steve hadn’t returned. Bucky had known he would be there, waiting. Steve, this Steve in front of him, had contacted him days ago. He had lived under their radar. Lived under an assumed identity he had explained.

_‘Was our friendship not enough to come back for?’_

Sam weighs up the shield. Notices the wedding ring, asks about her, the reason for the gaping wound in his soul. The feeling of not being enough. Steve won’t talk about her. Sam turns around to Bucky. A look passes over Sam’s face and he moves away, patting Bucky on the arm as he passes him.

“I know you are there Buck,” Steve says, age having taken the strong commanding edge he had in his voice, but it was only moments ago to them; decades past to him.

Bucky doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak. What words are there but ones soaked and mired in anger borne of the anticipation of a life lived lonely.

_‘I’m condemned to the life you said you hated. The one that isolated you even amongst your friends and comrades.’_

“I saw her in the past, when we were getting the Tesseract, and it looked like nothing had changed. Not a day had touched her. She was my Peggy. I’d lost her in the 40’s when I went down into the Ice, Buck. I lost her again 8 years ago, but here she was, alive, vital, and grief does a funny thing to a man. I felt like if I came back I was going to lose her again. I didn’t think I could do that.” Steve continues to look out over the water, not looking at Bucky. He sighs deeply as he looks at the stillness.

_‘Thing is Stevie, you always were on the outside. I remember the pubs in London with the Commandos. How you would abscond to a corner, as we joked and laughed and got drunk.’_

Bucky remains still and only the rise and fall of his chest gives any indication to him being alive.

“I did lose her again though. I lost her every day for nine years. Dementia robbed her, robbed us. We had a life though.” It’s the thought that keeps him going, not the fading of her mind, but the memory of the years they had before.

_‘You had a life Stevie, you had a life. I got the torture, the agony and the forced murders. I lost myself time and time again, Stevie. Over and over.  Sometimes I remembered you. And what did you do in your new timeline Stevie?’_

“Nothing.” Bucky is shocked. The word had tripped out from his mind and through his mind. An utterance betraying him, there’s a lot of that going around these days.

“Buck?” Steve slowly turns around. There’s a gulf of space between them, if someone had written it this way, it would be a visual metaphor for the gulf of space between them emotionally, but life is not that prosaic with its movements.

In his mind the recriminations are still roiling. Fury burns under the surface. The control the Wakandans had taught him had served him well in keeping a lot of things covered. He sighs, takes a deep breath and finally speaks.

“It’s what I am, left here. In the midst of the garbage that we have had to deal with, we always had each other. Now we don’t. You have left me with nothing. You left.”

Steve looks at his friend, a man he hasn’t seen in decades. This is the fallout from his unilateral decision. He doesn’t have a word to say. How could he? How could he excuse something he would never take back.

“Buck,” Steve starts, but where is he going to take this? He hasn’t a clue, all his years of wisdom fades. He is left bereft of words and what could he say, what would he say that would help this situation. He stares out at the quiet lake. So many years for him have passed from this day. Days that he knew would inevitably come full circle.

He slowly stands from the bench. He slowly shuffles away. The loss of the friend who long ago would have argued with him is like a punch to the gut.

“And you just leave.” Buck says, to the ether, to no one now that Steve has left him once more, Banner had already left, giving the two privacy. “And there it is Stevie, you ...”

 _‘ ...Leaving me here. A man out of time. Alone.’_ He thinks to himself with resignation.

Moments pass, a leaf falls from a tree and lands on the time travel pad. Buck walks to the seat the Steve had sat on. He runs his fingers over the wood of the bench, of where his friend, but not friend, had sat.

 _‘I wasn’t good enough,’_ he thinks once more.

The water on the lake is still, like glass. No wind stirs the water, the only stirring is the roiling emotions of the man out of time. The only one left now. His head drops as he sighs. Now he knows how Steve had felt until Steve had known of his existence, of him being alive still. Bucky wonders for a moment how to cope with it. If he was still the man he had been when shipping off in the forties maybe he would have shrugged it off and started a life of his own. If he were still a winter soldier, he surmised he wouldn’t have cared one way or another, survival and the mission was important.

But he wasn’t either of those men, war and experiments had sought to erase one, and returning to himself had erased the other, but the question was, who was he now without Steve, without the last remnant of a life which was now long dead. Where did he or would he belong, would the Avengers take him in, was the reconditioning the Wakandan’s had put him through, the rehabilitation – gentle as it was, was it permanent?

Slowly he rose, a breeze had picked up, but not much of one. A small gust, not much of one at all, but it was a gentle push away from this place. Bucky felt that it was time to join the others at Tony's house. The memorial service for Tony, now long over had been a line under the past, Natasha’s was in the morning. Simpler. Quieter, everyone supposed, since she no longer had family and only her friends to mourn her passing.

He rose from the same place that Steve had sat, no more the wiser for physically inhabiting the same space his friend, his brother, his ... had sat in. So much had gone unspoken between them. So many things that should have been said, things that were now dead. Things that were composed of the same material existence that Thanos had now. Dust on the air. He too moved from the lake.

Banner would likely be back to clear things up, and all Bucky could think of was being alone. A start of the life that he was to have, irrespective of the face and bodies that would inhabit it. No one would be able to understand his perspective, no one alive now knew what it felt like to be missing all that time. Steve had now lived his life. Bucky wasn’t Bucky, he wasn’t The Winter Soldier either. So who was he?

 

*              *              *

The wind gusted, light flared for a split second and a young man stood on the platform. Temporal inertia colliding with him, momentarily causing him to stumble. His white and red suit a stark contrast to the dark building he was in. He looked around, surveying his surroundings. He looked at the chronometer on his arm. And exhaled, shoulders dropping, a wash of resignation flowed over his face. He opened the hatch where the Pym particles were housed  in his suit and took out the phial. Empty. He swallowed. There would be no rectifying this calculation. But the job had been done.


End file.
